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Stephen Gary Wozniak is born in San Jose, California to Margaret Louise Wozniak and Francis Jacob "Jerry" Wozniak. His father was an Engineer at Lockheed Corporation. -
Steve Wozniak graduated from Homestead High School in the Spring of 1968 in Cupertino, California. This is Wozniaks 1968 school yearbook photo. -
Steve Wozniak enrolled in the the University of Colorado in at Boulder after his graduation from high school. He attended for one year before dropping out/ being suspended for hacking the university's computer system. -
After leaving the University of Colorado Boulder, Wozniak enrolled at the Cupertino Community College De Anza College -
After spending time at De Anza community college, Steve Wozniak transferred to the University of California, Berkeley. -
In June of the same year that Wozniak transferred to University of California, Berkeley, he built his first computer for a self-taught engineering project with his friend Bill Fernandez. The computer was named "Cream Soda" and was built using only punch cards and 20 TTL chips they got donated. Photo is Bill Fernandez (I couldn't find a picture of Fernandez and Wozniak together) -
Around 1975, Wozniak begins working at Hewlett-Packard working on calculator processors. It is here that he meets Steve Jobs, a student at his old high school who worked for HP for a summer, and also drops out of Berkeley. -
Soon after they met, Wozniak got inspired to build "blue boxes" which enabled long distance calls with no cost. Jobs handled the sales and they sold 200 of them for $150 each. Jobs claims that if they had not had this venture together, there would have been no Apple. -
Jobs worked at Atari where they offered financial incentive for reducing the amount of chips a machine needed to function. Jobs enlisted Wozniak's assistance and Wozniak was able to reduce the number of chips enough to get a $5,000 reward. Jobs only gave Wozniak $350. -
Wozniak designed the Apple I largely to impress the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club. -
Wozniak completed the basic design of the Apple I computer. He alone designed the hardware, circuit board designs, and operating system. -
With the help of Ronald Wayne (whose participation ended up being temporary) they started the first iteration of Apple as we know it today. The photo included was the first logo designed by Wayne. -
The Apple II debuted at the West Coast Computer Faire. This was one of the first highlight successful mass-produced personal computers in the world. -
Apple went public in 1980 and instantly made Wozniak and Jobs millionaires. Around this same time, the Apple III was released and was an overall failure due to hardware errors made by the marketing department. Wozniak claims this was due to a shift away from the engineering-based ethos and towards a more marketing-based ethos. -
After recovering from the plane crash, Wozniak returned to Berkeley to finish his degree. He enrolled under the pseudonym 'Rocky Raccoon Clark' whcih was the name on his diploma when he graduated in 1986.
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Wozniak, his then-fiancée, his then-fiancée's brother, and his sister-in-law were all injured in a serious plane crash while Wozniak was piloting. Wozniak suffered from five weeks of anterograde amnesia after the crash and took a serious step back from Apple while recovering and even after recovering from this crash. His involvement from this point forward was intermittent. -
In may 1982 Wozniak founded the company Unuson which sponsored US festivals. It was initially intended to celebrate technological advancement but also merged with a rock music scene and ended up being a combination of the two. The 1982 festival was a major loss and so he vowed that if 1983 didn't turn a profit he would personally drop the endeavor. -
After the flop of US festivals, Wozniak returned to Apple specifically requesting the role of an Engineer and no more. -
Wozniak and Jef Raskin worked together on the Macintosh 128k or the original Macintosh that released in January of 1984. Wozniak's 1981 plane crash meant he was quite removed from things then on but he was still integral to the development of this computer prior to his crash. This computer was revolutionary because it was the first mass-market personal computer that featured an integral graphical user interface and mouse. -
After continuously experiencing corporate disrespect himself and towards Apple's flagship device, The Apple II, Wozniak was upset Wozniak left Apple again. The Apple II made up 85% of Apple's sales but its creator and current team were not invited to The Macintosh release event. The Apple II team were also not mentioned in the 1985 annual meeting despite making up such a large percentage of profits.
Wozniak didn't like what the company was becoming and didn't want to be involved any longer. -
Wozniak founder a company called CL 9 in 1985 which brought a programmable universal remote to market in 1987. The remote was successful. -
Wozniak founder Wheel of Zeus in 2001 which was a company that created accessible wireless GPS technology. The company closed in 2006 when Wozniak founder Acquicor Technology which was a holding company that acquired technology companies and developed them.
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Along with Stan lee, Wozniak announced the first annual Silicon Valley Comic Con in 2015 to be held in San Jose. The convention was cofounded by Wozniak and Rick White. -
In 2020 Wozniak announced the launch of Efforce which is a digital marketplace for funding ecologically friendly projects. It used the WOZX cryptocurrency to operate along with blockchain technology. -
It was rumored that Wozniak was starting a new company to adress the issue of space debris in early 2021 and the monitoring technology was debuted in March of 2022. He is working with Alex Fielding on the endeavor.